Printing police handcuff keys …

German SSDeV member Ray is known all around the world for his impressive collection of handcuffs and his fun ways of opening most of them. On top of that he gives great presentations and always manages to add a lot of humor into them!

At HAR he pulled another stunt: He used a 3D printer to print handcuff keys. And not just any ordinary handcuff key … no, it’s the official handcuff key from the Dutch police! At first the police officers at HAR were a little reluctant to event try out the plastic key he printed. But he found another way to verify the key he printed was the correct one. I guess these officers never thought about wearing keys concealed, especially when talking with Mr. Handcuff himself. Given the megapixel camera’s on the market today it was not so difficult to verify the key he printed was the correct one.

At the end of the day he talked the officers into trying the key on their handcuffs and … it did work! At least the Dutch Police now knows there is a plastic key on the market that will open their handcuffs. A plastic key undetectable by metal detectors….

And Ray made it easy for you. For those of you wanting to print your own Dutch police handcuff key … the STL file is available online at http://ke.y.nu/

The New York Times just came out with an article on European lockpickers, quoting a Dutch Police officer who was not too negative about the lockpick scene. Lets hope they still feel this way after this post …

*Warning* Before you print out your keys please check your local law! Reading the article below (pdf mirror) should be a fair warning! In some places it is not quite healthy to run around wearing police handcuffs ….

For wearing handcuff keys on a necklace draped around his neck, a homeless Miami Beach man could face years in prison.

Prosecutors on Tuesday formally charged Michael Gonzalez, 22, with disorderly intoxication, marijuana possession and two counts of possession of a concealed handcuff key — a third-degree felony punishable by up to five years in prison.

“There’s got to be some kind of constitutional violation in there somewhere,” Assistant Public Defender Michelle Prescott grumbled to the court.

Actually, the Florida Legislature passed the law after the 1998 murders of two Tampa deputies and a state trooper. Hank Earl Carr shot and killed them after he escaped his cuffs using a universal handcuff key hidden on a necklace.

Gonzalez was arrested Aug. 16 after Miami Beach police said he was harassing women on the South Beach sand. In a report, Officer Errol Vidal wrote that he found a small amount of marijuana in the man’s pocket and “two handcuff keys concealed under his shirt on a necklace.”

Also under Gonzalez’s shirt: a tattoo on his right shoulder, with the word “anarchy” and shooting flames.

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25 Responses to “Printing police handcuff keys …”

“two counts of possession of a concealed handcuff key” – “Itâ€™s an actual felony” – wow. ok, yeah, you expect it in the US, but what about other countries? Kinda curious to know if it’s a felony here?…
Hand cuff keys? Seriously?! o.O

We printed 2 versions when we got back from HAR2009, check out our Flickr photoset (near the end) for some pictures of the 3D printed keys. Our Dimension FDM machine has a better layer resolution in the Z direction, so the key that was built vertically has more detail and it seems to be a bit stronger.

With metal 3D printing techniques becoming more accessible and affordable it would be possible to copy almost any key.. all you need is a good high resolution picture and a scale reference to build a virtual model which can be printed on demand.

anon said: “BrSSnKl, posting your email address in a public place is very dangerous. ”

Give me one reason why it is so dangerous? Here is mine: einstein@mbnet.fi and all you can do with it is to A) send me mail and B) get some spammer interested. There is this thing called spam filter, which already trashes 90% of all incoming messages on the spot, so that ain’t a problem 🙂

@Jaakko Fagerlund:
Well if someone was inclined to… they could start a profile on that address manually or just run it through a program like Maltego and do some further manual scraping to further build a profile on you. Follow that up with some social engineering on a forum or contact you on similar interests…. say dictionary.com or tut.fi for example….
That is why you should protect your email adress.

I find it ironic that the EU, which has managed to ban Danish cartoons, German video games, and all sorts of things that may offend others, would have such a following protecting those who use handcuff keys for ill will.

Here in the States, unless you’re in the military or law enforcement, leave your fuzzy handcuff keys at home.
Or in your LockCon case.

I’m actually doing some commercial work on handcuffs right now, if anybody’s interested.
There’s no reason to go after the Medeco if you can exploit the cuffs.

The attack on the handcuff you’re talking about is well known, especially after I presented it at the HOPE conference last year:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5-c5OA0-9U
I’ve already discussed ways to prevent that with people commercially involved (Peerless also tried that on their own and failed with the XJ model…), if you’re interested just contact me, email is written on my site linked above…

Oh, and to all the people who took so much interest in this: thanks! It was fun at HAR and also quite some afterwards…

And to the critics: this never was inteded to be evil, and it isn’t. The key itself never was a secret, even though they won’t sell it there are good pictures of it on the internet, even on police-equipment shops.So the dutch police always had to know there’s a chance of someone having that key. I just reminded them of that… My intention mainly was to show a reprap can print actual keys – that to my knowledge never has been done before and I was surprised myself how good it finally worked. Choosing a handcuff key just seemed logical after all the talks I held about opening those…

P.S: Regarding the video linked above: that’s actually part 3/3 of the first version of my talk, held in New York mid 2008. For people who understand german I’d recomnend the longer version I held at the 25C3 in Berlin, “Handschellen Hacken” which can be found athttp://events.ccc.de/congress/2008/wiki/Conference_Recordings

@Ray: Granted, a hinged Medeco behind my back is something I’ve yet to accomplish, but we all can dream. ASP has some prototypes floating around, with almost no metal and everything ultrasonically welded, then polished obliterating the seam. Shrug. These are ideas, mind you, but y’alls input are always welcome.

On another note, anyone seen these new 13 pin tubulars? Or am I just old?

[…] know manufacturing processes have come a long way when you can print a working copy of the official Dutch handcuff key from nothing more than a convenient, digital photo. And that’s just what German named Ray […]

P.S: Regarding the video linked above: that’s actually part 3/3 of the first version of my talk, held in New York mid 2008. For people who understand german I’d recomnend the longer version I held at the 25C3 in Berlin, “Handschellen Hacken” which can be found at http://events.ccc.de/congress/2008/wiki/Conference_Recordings

[…] HOPE demonstration wasn’t the first time he’s posed the problem for handcuff makers. In 2009, he reproduced simpler, more easily obtained keys used by Dutch police at another hacker conference in Vierhouten in the […]